How To Use Facebook To Market Your Business: Part 1- Setting Up Your Business Page

For many individuals, Facebook is the greatest thing ever invented. Others think it’s an utter waste of time. But regardless of how you personally view it, the truth is Facebook has grown into a powerful tool for marketing businesses of all kinds. With over 1.5 billion people actively using Facebook each month, it’s a great platform to reach audiences and customers you’d never encounter otherwise, and learning how to use it to promote your products and services might just give your business the marketing boost you’ve been looking for.

In this article, we’ll show you how to create a Facebook Business page from beginning to end, and when we’re done, you’ll know everything you need to create your own Facebook Business page in just a matter of minutes, no matter how familiar you are with computers or online marketing. Of course, simply setting up your account merely scratches the surface of what Facebook can do for your business, since it also offers one of the best online-marketing systems currently available, but we’ll cover that in a future article.

Creating Your Business’ Facebook Account

NOTE: If you’re not already logged in to your personal account, you’ll need to do so first. If you don’t already have a personal Facebook account, here’s how to create one.

Setting Up Your Business’ Facebook Account

The next page asks you to choose the kind of page you want. If you’re a local business (with a storefront open to the public), choose “local business or place”. If just setting up a business page in general, choose “Company, organization or institution”.

For this article, I chose “Company, organization or institution”, since the client I’m setting up for doesn’t have a physical storefront, but does conduct business with the general public. Next, choose the industry type. For this client, I chose “company”, since nothing else seemed closer.

Just pick whatever you think fits best. Now input your company’s name.
After you’ve selected your industry and company name, click the “Get started” button.
Next comes a 4-part setup process.
Part one asks you for a short description of your business, and the url of your website (if you already have a website. If not, click here). You can also customize the url for your Facebook Business page, or let Facebook create one for you. Go ahead and fill it out for yourself, since it’ll be easier to remember, but choose carefully; you can only change it once.

Also, keep in mind this description is limited to 155 characters or less, so make them count. You can skip this step for now if you like, otherwise fill it out and click “Save Info”.

Next comes adding a profile picture. You can upload one from your computer, or grab one from your website. (Note: I tried importing a picture from a website, but for whatever reason it didn’t work). After choosing your picture, click “save photo”.

Next comes the option to add your new page to your favorites, making it easier to find when you want to post or edit. Click the “add to favorites” button.

The last section asks you to choose your preferred page audience. This might just be the most important step in the process, so pay careful attention (though you can always change or update this information later).
First, pick the geographic area you want to focus on. If you only serve a specific geographic area, enter the city and radius around it you serve (up to 50 miles). You can also choose multiple areas (like if you operate a chain of stores), or even entire countries (if, for example, you ship anywhere in the US). If you know the age group you want to target, enter it now, or you can leave the default settings alone. You can also choose which gender to target if you like.
Now, enter your interests (or more accurately, the interests of the people you want to target). For a puppy breeder, include interests like “dogs”, “puppies”, and whatever breeds you offer. When you’re done, click save.
Now pat yourself on the back; you’re all done creating your Facebook Business page! Next you’ll be taken to your newly-created page, and asked to like it. Go ahead; you deserve it. Better yet, find someone else (or lots of them) to like your new page for you.

Putting On The Finishing Touches

Of course, there’s still a few details to take care of, like entering a bit more information about your business. To do this, click the “about” button to the right of your profile picture.
You’ll notice some of the information is already filled out for you, but other sections might still need your attention. Scroll down to “Topics”, and pick 3 words to describe your page (for this client, I chose “english cream retriever”, “dog breeder”, and “puppies”). Next, enter your address (if desired, or if you have a physical storefront).

Tip: “Impressum” is not short for “impressive possum”, but a legal requirement in some countries. Since we’re in the US, ignore it.

There’s a great deal of optional information you can choose to include, such as company overviews, long descriptions, mission statements, founding dates, awards, products, etc. Fill out as much as you like.

Pictures Worth A Thousand Words

If you like, click “photos” at the top near “about”, and add some photos. Uploading pictures is fairly standard. Click “add photos”, then choose what you want to upload, then click “open”. You can choose to add more pictures, tag them, etc. When done, click the “post” button at the bottom left of the page.

Tip: If you want to upload multiple pictures at once, click the first picture you want, hold down the “shift” key on your keyboard, then click the last picture you want. All pictures in between will be selected.

Next, create a call to action, which is a button you encourage people to click to do something, like visit your website. Click the “create call to action” button near the top of the page (by “photos” and “about”). Enter your information, and click “create”.

After creating your call-to-action, you’ll notice it now appears at the top of your page. If you’re signed in to the account, you can click it and choose “test button” to make sure it goes where you want it to.

Phase 1 Complete

You now have a Facebook page just for your business! The next step is to get friends/family/coworkers/partners to like and comment on your page, and encourage them to share it with others. But that’s not all; you can also create posts, upload videos, and do things to promote your page, such as creating ads or paying to promote it (topics for a future article).

TIP: if you need to switch between your personal account and the business one, click the downward-pointing arrow next to the world icon at the top right of the page. A box pops up asking you to choose the account to want to use Facebook as. Use this option to switch between your personal and business accounts.